"The office does not keep very early hours," remarked the girl, "but some one will certainly be here in a moment. I am sorry you have had to wait." She had not changed her position, and Griswold rather hoped she would not, for the door framed her perfectly, and the sunlight from the inner windows emphasized the whiteness of the snowy gown she wore. Her straw hat was shaped like a soldier's campaign hat, with sides pinned up, the top dented, and a single feather thrust into the side. "It was not I," said Griswold, "who so rudely shook the door. I beg that you will acquit me of that violence." The girl did not, however, respond to his smile. She poked the floor with her parasol a moment, then raised her head and asked: "Who was it, if you please?" "A gentleman with a brown beard, a red necktie, and a bad disposition." "I thought as much," she said, half to herself, and her eyes were bent again upon the point of her parasol, with which she was tracing a design in the rug. She lifted her head with the abruptness of quick decision, and looked straight at Griswold. The negress had withdrawn to the outer door, by which she sat with sphinx-like immovability. "I am Miss Osborne. Governor Osborne is my father. Would you mind telling me whether your business with my father is--" She hesitated, and her eyes met Griswold's. "Miss Osborne, as I have no acquaintances here, let me introduce myself. My name is Griswold. My home is Charlottesville. Pardon me, but you and I were fellow-passengers from Atlanta yesterday evening. I am unacquainted with your father, and I have no business with him except--" He was not yet clear in his mind whether to tell her that her father's life was threatened; it did not seem fair to alarm her when he was powerless to help; but as he weighed the question the girl came out into the reception-room and sat down near the window. "Won't you have a seat, Mr. Griswold? May I ask you again whether you know the gentleman who came in here and beat the door a while ago?" "I never saw him before in my life." "That is very well. And now, Mr. Griswold, I am going to ask you to tell me, if you will, just what it is you wish to say to my father." She was very earnest, and the request she made rang the least bit imperiously. She now held the white parasol across her lap in the tight clasp of her white-gloved hands. "I should not hesitate--" began Griswold, still uncertain what to do. "You need not hesitate in the fear that you may alarm me. I think I know"--and she half-smiled now--"I think perhaps I know what it is." "My reason for wishing to see your father is, then, to warn him that if a criminal named Appleweight is brought back from his hiding-place on the North Carolina frontier, and tried for his crimes in South Carolina, the governor of that state, your father, will be made to suffer by Appleweight's friends." "That is what I thought," said the girl, slowly nodding her head.